Video 17:03
Discussion on the week in politics

The Liberal's Kelly O'Dwyer and Labor's Andrew Leigh survey the political week with Emma Alberici.

Transcript

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: Now for our Friday political forum I was joined earlier from Melbourne by the Liberal's Kelly O'Dwyer and from Canberra by Labor's Andrew Leigh.

Kelly O'Dwyer and Andrew Leigh, thanks so much for being there for us tonight.

ANDREW LEIGH, LABOR BACKBENCHER: Pleasure.

KELLY O'DWYER, LIBERAL BACKBENCHER: Great to be with you Emma.

EMMA ALBERICI: If I can start with you Kelly O'Dwyer, Tony Abbott's wife was out today making a speech about her husband. I wanted to ask you whether you thought that was actually necessary. Do you think it was a revelation to most people that the Opposition leader is loved by his wife, his daughters and his sisters?

KELLY O'DWYER: Well Emma, what we're seeing for the very first time in Australian political history is gender being used as a political weapon. We're seeing gender being introduced by the Labor Party as a shield to stop any questions legitimately being asked about the Prime Minister and her record.

And we're seeing gender be used as a political weapon against Tony Abbott. What has been a very vicious and very personal attack waged by members of the frontbench team. What I have coined as the handbag hit squad, and I think that that is a real low for us.

Margie Abbott today came out in defence of her husband Tony because of this very gendered war that's being waged as part of a political strategy.

I think it is very important that she did so to set the record straight because what we have seen from a very desperate Labor Party is a lot of smear, a lot of innuendo, and Margie was able to talk about Tony Abbott, her husband of 24 years, the father of her three daughters, who was brought up with very strong feminist principles.

She talked about the fact of course that he's someone who has always had a female chief of staff, who relates very, very well to women and who like her wants to contribute very strongly to a life of public service to his local community.

EMMA ALBERICI: Andrew Leigh, is Labor waging a gender war?

ANDREW LEIGH: I think there's two aspects to this, Emma.

First of all is the Opposition leader's clear statements such as that the Prime Minister has a target on her forehead, constantly referring to the Prime Minister as 'she' in Parliament and then on a broader policy level you can see clear differences between the Labor Party having supported things like changing workplace legislation to allow equal pay cases, introducing paid parental leave, and making important changes to superannuation that will benefit women.

More broadly I think there's also the effect that Mr Abbott has had on political discourse today.

I was in my electorate in Gungahlin at lunchtime talking to voters and there was a man there who said at the end of our conversation, "look I've disagreed with you on many of the policy issues we've spoken about but I do appreciate that each time you've listened to the end of my statement, you've let me finish before you've spoken."

And he said "I really miss that about modern politics today. Too many people are cutting across one another. That's too much nastiness."

I don't think that's all Mr Abbott's fault. I gave a speech earlier this year about the technological changes in the media which I think are fuelling some of that. Certainly the lack of policy has meant that we've seen increasing focus on politics and on this the sort of politics of smear rather than what an Opposition should be doing, which is presenting an alternative vision for the country.

EMMA ALBERICI: Kelly O'Dwyer, you talk about Labor being responsible for this kind of gender-specific kind of debate. Tony Abbott himself stood on a platform at an anti-carbon tax rally alongside people holding placards that said 'Ditch the Witch - Juliar, Bob Brown's bitch'. Does that make you comfortable?

KELLY O'DWYER: Tony didn't know those signs were being held up and he repudiated that immediately when he was told that those signs were held up in front of him, I think to try and draw ...

EMMA ALBERICI: They were right behind him, he must have seen them there, to say that he didn't know that they were there when they were right behind him is a little disingenuous surely?

KELLY O'DWYER: Emma ... well you don't have eyes in the back of your head, I think it would be sort of a preposterous suggestion to think that Tony could actually you know have eyes in the back of his head ...

EMMA ALBERICI: And they were all throughout the crowd to.

KELLY O'DWYER: I actually think, I think though the important point here is a point that's actually been raised by Andrew.

Tony Abbott is not responsible for this negative political discourse. This is something that is part of a political strategy, the architect of which has been this Labor Government. The reason they've done that is they do not want to stand on their record.

They do not want to talk about the $120 billion black hole that they've created in the budget. They do not want to talk about the fact they've delivered four deficits that have added up to over $173 billion.

EMMA ALBERICI: I want to talk about the economy. I do want to talk about the economy, but I think we need to focus on this just for a moment. And I want to ask Andrew Leigh, we heard a lot about those obviously this week, about those offensive comments by the broadcaster Alan Jones about Julia Gillard's deceased father. What did those comments have to do with Tony Abbott?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well they were delivered, Emma, at a Liberal Party fundraiser which was attended by a Liberal Party frontbencher and several Liberal Party MPs, none of whom as I understand it left the room when those offensive comments were made.

EMMA ALBERICI: But members of your frontbench have associated those comments directly with Tony Abbott.

ANDREW LEIGH: If those statements had been made at a Labor Party fundraiser I suspect that people would be rightly asking what the Labor Party was doing hosting a speaker who was making such comments.

I'm broadly in agreement with Kelly, that the key differences here are policy differences.

I think if you look at the sets of policies that have been pursued by Tony Abbott over his political career, whether that's vetoing RU486 as Health Minister using his personal veto, whether that's standing against Labor's paid parental leave scheme, against our changes to the Workplace Relations system that allowed equal pay cases - it is those policy decisions that for me very much define what's going on here.

And so I do agree with Kelly about the importance of policy.

EMMA ALBERICI: Kelly O'Dwyer do you think it was appropriate to link Tony Abbott to those comments by Alan Jones?

KELLY O'DWYER: Well it is quite patently ridiculous to have linked Tony Abbott to the comments made by Alan Jones. Tony Abbott said those comments were offensive.

Comments about family members are deeply, deeply hurtful and he was very quick to condemn those comments by Alan Jones, but to somehow try and draw an association between the two is just ugly smear and it is a smear that's part of an orchestrated strategy by the Labor Party.

Of course, the Labor Party in the same week that they have tried to link Tony Abbott to the comments made by one of our nation's broadcasters has said pretty much nothing on the fact that their national president has just been charged, their former national president, Michael Williamson was charged with over 20 counts over fraud and other criminal allegations to do with his management of the HSU union.

Now, he was the president of the Labor Party in 2010. He was vice president in 2011. His protege is Craig Williams on whose vote this government relies to stay in power.

EMMA ALBERICI: I think you meant Craig Thomson.

KELLY O'DWYER: Sorry.

EMMA ALBERICI: These issues are before the court. I understand the Prime Minister in this context has said it is just inappropriate to comment, but of course it is clear for all to see that's a completely different case to what we're talking about here. Comments by an influential broadcaster and the fact that someone's in a legal process, I can't see where the nexus is.

KELLY O'DWYER: No, the nexus is around the fact that the Labor Party wants to try and draw relationships between people and yet, there's a very clear relationship with Craig Thomson on whose vote they rely.

There's a very clear relationship with Michael Williamson who, frankly, it is very clear for everybody to see that there's been a huge misuse of HSU union money which the Prime Minister, frankly, ought to condemn, condemn strongly, and disassociate from.

And yet she relies on this vote in the Parliament. It props up her morally bankrupt government and I think it is entirely appropriate to draw that link.

EMMA ALBERICI: Now you said you want to talk about the economy and about policy so let's do just that. Andrew Leigh, the Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson today made a speech posing the question how do governments at all levels maintain fiscal sustainability while also actively growing expectations in the community that governments should provide for them?

ANDREW LEIGH: It is a huge challenge, Emma. Just to put some of this in broad context, the Australian economy has performed remarkably well through a huge terms of trade shock, a huge rise in the prices of what we sell to the world relative to what they buy ... we buy from them.

If you look back to the 1930s, the 1950s, the 1970s, these terms of trade shocks blew the place up. What's astonishing is through this one we've seen the unemployment rate continue with a five in front of it. We've seen inflation stay at moderate levels.

EMMA ALBERICI: But we've also seen your government making increasing promises about spending going out into the future with no understanding whatsoever of how you're going to pay for it?

ANDREW LEIGH: No we have a strong understanding of fiscal discipline, Emma. We've made $100 billion worth of savings in recent budgets. In broad terms, what you're now seeing is fiscal policy returning to a normal cycle.

Australia borrowed a moderate amount of money, about 10 per cent of GDP, with which we saved around 200,000 jobs in the global financial crisis. If you think we shouldn't have taken on the debt basically you're saying we shouldn't have saved the jobs.

We're now paying down that debt.

This is a tough world economy in which to be operating, make no bones about it. There are challenges aplenty, but I think Australia is going to be growing faster than any major advanced economy over coming years.

Certainly, if you speak to any senior economic policy maker when they go to one of these global conferences they have people around the table saying how did you do it? Not that Australia ...

EMMA ALBERICI: They're saying how are you going to pay for your commitments.

Kelly O'Dwyer your side has also got into the habit now of making lots of commitments without putting any substance to how you're going to pay for them?

KELLY O'DWYER: The Government of course has to be the one to answer questions about how they're going to pay for their new spending initiatives.

Now Andrew talks about the savings that they've made, well in this budget and in subsequent budgets I'm sure to come most of the savings that they like to declare are savings are in fact tax increases. Since they've come to government we've seen more than 26 new or increased taxes. We have seen increase the size of the budget in terms of spending, more than $100 billion and this is before the ...

EMMA ALBERICI: My question to you, sorry to bring you back to the question I started with, you've made commitments of something in the order of $70 billion plus another $10 billion if you add the likes of increased spending on the military, superannuation increases and bringing back the health insurance rebate which you've promised also to do.

They tally up to something in the order of $80 billion. Are you going to give us some indication how they're going to be paid for?

KELLY O'DWYER: I don't accept the $80 billion in terms of how much it is going to cost but we certainly believe it is important to be very fiscally prudent. We've demonstrated that in the past. We'll do that again in government.

Let's not forget Emma, we actually repaid back $96 billion of Labor's debt and we actually created a surplus of $20 billion when we left government. They turned that around. Instead of having $70 billion which we provided for in net assets they made sure that we had a net debt ...

EMMA ALBERICA: But there's a global financial crisis in the middle there.

KELLY O'DWYER: Yes but Emma, they've actually increased spending. They've added over $100 billion to the budget but more than that. This is before you get to the new spending they've announced.

We see now $120 billion black hole and the government says don't worry about it don't ask questions about how it is going to be paid for we'll tell you at some point in the future.

It does not add up and they'll not answer these very simple questions. This is part of their responsibility in government.

EMMA ALBERICI: $120 billion is a bit mischievous though isn't it because it includes the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Gonski education reforms which the government has said intends to be cost-shared with the States?

KELLY O'DWYER: This is great. It is very convenient. The Government makes a declaration, makes a promise and then they say somebody else is going to have to actually pay for it.

The Government is responsible for their own spending announcements and they have not provided any figures as to how it will be paid for. What that means for ordinary everyday Australians is that they ultimately will be paying for it. We simply say that they need to fess-up, they need to get honest with the Australian public and talk about how it will be financed ...

EMMA ALBERICI: Andrew Leigh.

KELLY O'DWYER: Because until they can do that they're not being fiscally responsible.

ANDREW LEIGH: Emma if you want to know how we're going to pay for these, you can simply look to the budget documents which are going to be updated with the mid-year statement.

Governing is about making choices. For example, we made the choice to not subsidise the health insurance of millionaires in order that we could put in place a National Disability Insurance Scheme.

We made the choice to put a profits-based tax on mining which is a more efficient way of taxing mining, indeed a tax that was recommended to the Henry Review by the Minerals Council of Australia, and with that we're investing in infrastructure and supporting the superannuation of low-income workers.

KELLY O'DWYER: Can I just make a point here Emma, I mean there are a number of examples that Andrew is just talking about. Let's take one, the chronic dental disease program that he was talking about.

They say that this was a program that funded millionaires, now 80 per cent of people who received the benefits of this dental disease scheme were in fact concession card holders. They're not millionaires.

They're people who suffer from diabetes, who have heart issues. So the government is being completely and utterly disingenuous to make that claim.

More to the point they say they're going to have a new dental scheme. This dental scheme is not going to start this year or next year. It is going to start after the next election for children on the first of January and for adults midway through the year in July.

So it is 19 months until adults apparently are going to see the benefit of this supposed new scheme and it is going to be about 13 months before children do. That's a very, very long time to wait if you've got problems with your teeth.

EMMA ALBERICI: Andrew Leigh?

ANDREW LEIGH: I'm happy to respond on the dental question Emma. I think at the time it was set up the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme was estimated to cost about $80 million a year. Now it's costing about $60 million a month. There's been massive costs blowouts and I've ...

KELLY O'DWYER: Do you think it is for millionaires for people who have health problems, Andrew?

ANDREW LEIGH: I've certainly spoken to, I remember a dentist who came to see me who said that he had been referred a patient who was very well off, was getting some expensive work done. The doctor had been willing to refer him into this scheme so the taxpayer could pick up part of the tab.

We just couldn't keep track of the spending on this scheme and that's why we're replacing it, as Kelly has rightly said, with a scheme which will allow parents and Family Tax Benefit Part A to go into the dentist, to swipe their Medicare card and to receive not just the check up that they can now get, but basic treatment.

We're not going to be supplying braces but if there's basic remedial work that kids need we'll be supplying that.

Again, it is a matter of values. It is a matter of looking rigorously at programs, shutting them down when they haven't worked, being willing to take on the interest groups which are critical of those decisions, stare down the Coalition members who howled outrage at the time we shut that scheme down and say taxpayers' money can be better spent on a more efficient dental scheme.

EMMA ALBERICI: I think the moral of the story is neither of you are going to tell us how you're going to fund your new commitments and unfortunately we have to leave it there. Thank you both so much for coming in this evening.